Hemingway topic of Clark library exhibit

Lori Qualls, lqualls@mdn.net

Published
6:00 am EST, Thursday, February 21, 2019

The Clarke Historical Library’s latest exhibit, The Hemingway Collection at the Clarke, highlights the key resources that have been meticulously chosen over the past 20 years to build a collection that interprets the unique story of Nobel laureate’s Ernest Hemingway’s relationship with Michigan and how his experiences shaped the man and influenced his writings. (Clark Historical Library) less

The Clarke Historical Library’s latest exhibit, The Hemingway Collection at the Clarke, highlights the key resources that have been meticulously chosen over the past 20 years to build a collection that ... more

Photo: (Clark Historical Library)

Photo: (Clark Historical Library)

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The Clarke Historical Library’s latest exhibit, The Hemingway Collection at the Clarke, highlights the key resources that have been meticulously chosen over the past 20 years to build a collection that interprets the unique story of Nobel laureate’s Ernest Hemingway’s relationship with Michigan and how his experiences shaped the man and influenced his writings. (Clark Historical Library) less

The Clarke Historical Library’s latest exhibit, The Hemingway Collection at the Clarke, highlights the key resources that have been meticulously chosen over the past 20 years to build a collection that ... more

Photo: (Clark Historical Library)

Hemingway topic of Clark library exhibit

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The Clarke Historical Library's latest exhibit, The Hemingway Collection at the Clarke, highlights the key resources that have been meticulously chosen over the past 20 years to build a collection that interprets the unique story of Nobel laureate's Ernest Hemingway's relationship with Michigan and how his experiences shaped the man and influenced his writings.

The exhibit opens Thursday, Feb. 21, with a 7 p.m. lecture by Mike Federspiel, CMU history professor, Janet Danek, exhibit coordinator, and Frank Boles, director of the Clarke Historical Library, in the Opperman auditorium at Park Library, where the historical library is located. They will share insights about how the collection came to be.

The exhibit, which continues through August, features the "gems" of the collection, which are at the heart of Hemingway's Michigan story.

"The gems are composed of items such as letters, envelopes, a magazine cover and a first-edition publication," according to text from the historical library's section on the Hemingway exhibit at www.cmich.edu/library/clarke. "All these formats reduce themselves to humble, and in many ways, visually uninteresting text. They are items that might be overlooked if placed among many other objects in one of the Clarke's large exhibit cases."

To distinguish the gems, each was placed in an individual exhibition case set against a translucent, nine-foot tall banner hanging down from the ceiling. The banners feature the artifact's title, text interpreting its significance, and the story of how it became part of the collection.

"These gem-and-banner assemblages were clustered together in the center of the exhibit gallery, parting to create a path to what came to be viewed as the single most important item: the (Jim) Gamble letter," according to the website.

The library explains the letter:

Gamble had been Hemingway's commander in Italy during World War I, where the two had become friends. Gamble had invited Hemingway to spend time in Italy with him, but Hemingway had returned to America. In the spring of 1919, Hemingway wrote Gamble with a similar idea but a significant twist: Gamble, Hemingway suggested, should come to the United States and spend the summer with him around Little Traverse Bay. To persuade his former commander to make the trip, Hemingway wrote several pages describing the delights of Michigan. The letter's glowing descriptions of what Gamble would experience made clear just how much Hemingway loved northern Michigan.

Other items are featured around the perimeter of the gallery, including four enormous wall-mounted images, including one of Hemingway.